Randy Parr, talk-show host’s daughter, dies at 63

Hamilton Spectator

Randy Paar, who is remembered by many 1950s and ‘60s television viewers as the cute, precocious girl whom her father, the late-night talk-show host Jack Paar, introduced to a national audience in his monologues and home movies, died on Saturday after falling off a platform at Grand Central Terminal. A successful lawyer in Manhattan, she was 63.

Her death was being investigated by the police, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the city’s medical examiner.

Robin Cohen, a friend and colleague at the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, said Paar was found on Track 26 just before 8 a.m. last Wednesday. She appeared to have fallen backward onto the track and hit her head, Cohen said. Taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, Paar died there three days later. Cohen said investigators told her that Paar may have had a stroke or seizure before tumbling onto the track.

Jack Paar, who succeeded Steve Allen in 1957 as the second host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC (it was later retitled “The Jack Paar Show”), brought a quirky personality to late-night television. He kept little of his personal life from viewers, and that included his wife, Miriam, and his daughter, Randy. He had Randy on the show frequently, spoke of her when she wasn’t there and showed home movies of her antics.